1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to medical devices and, more specifically, to medical devices for endovascular deployment in lumens of vasculatures of mammals.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known that stents can be placed within the vasculature using endovascular techniques for the treatment of diseased vessels. Known applications of stents include treatment of stenotic and atherosclerotic lesions in the coronary, peripheral, and cerebral vasculature. Another common application of stents is the treatment of cerebral aneurysms. Stents are designed to oppose the subject's inner vascular walls and provide an unobstructed conduit for blood flow within the stent lumen.
Stents are generally designed as straight homogenous tubes using biocompatible materials designed to treat the vessel pathology. Placing stents into vessel bifurcations requires deployment of multiple stents given the materials currently available. When more than one device is placed with overlap, the risk of complication exponentially increases—vessel wall apposition is decreased and stent material extends into the vessel lumen more than single stent material. There are several stent designs to overcome the problems associated with a bifurcation, but no current design permits a unitary stent with three tubes to be placed into a bifurcating vessel and, due to the problems described above, such a unitary design is needed.